Archive for April 20, 2017

Trump and National Security Advisor HR McMaster

They Lost the Fleet at Sea? Be Afraid…Be Very Afraid!

No matter how they try to spin it the alarming fact is that the Commander-In-Chief lost track of a nuclear armed carrier fleet on the high seas! It is a blunder unprecedented in US history, and the attempt to pass it off as Trump being “unpredictable” is unconvincing and does not pass the smell test. Yet even if it were true, that would-be madness since it created the most dangerous possibility of a nuclear exchange since the Cuban missile crisis – an event that nearly destroyed our civilization!

Accompanied by the reckless rhetoric of Donald Trump bragging about the firepower of his magnificent Armada, while threatening an assault on North Korea after bombing Afghanistan and Syria, the North Korean Ambassador to the UN announced that any attack on his nation by the US would be met with the full force of their military…including nukes! Listening to the news this morning I find an attempt to play down the magnitude of this blunder, and it is disconcerting.

There are vital lessons to be learned here and it would behoove us to learn them quickly. The most important of these lessons is that the US Armed Forces, which has the power to wipe out the world, has a chain of command which is in disarray because the Commander-In-Chief is an incompetent ignoramus, and mistakes can be made in the deployment of nuclear weapons; therefore an accidental nuclear war is quite possible. I have repeatedly warned of this grim possibility in several essays.

In listening to people discuss the possibility of nuclear war I find that they are in deep denial. Unable to contemplate the horror of it all, they take refuge in the assumption that no leader of a nuclear armed country would dare order an attack on another nuclear armed country because of the certain consequences to themselves. In military strategy this is known as the MAD doctrine i.e. “Mutual Assured Destruction.”

It is this policy that has thus far prevented a war between nuclear powers, although we came within one wrong decision by Kennedy or Krushev from blwing up the world during the Cubam Missile Crisis of 1962. Yet we should take no comfort in the fact that the MAD doctrine has worked in the past, for new dangers have arisen that threaten to make this policy obsolete.

******************

The main danger lay in the development of the Internet and the advent of cyber-warfare. This makes threats, and loose talk about the possible use of nukes in a first strike, a destabilizing factor that was not a part of the security regime in the past. And thus it ushers in new scenarios as to how an accidental nuclear war could start, and I have never believed a war between nuclear powers would ensue other than by accident. But when you have the President of the USA, who commands the world’s most potent nuclear arsenal, saying things like he won’t take “the nuclear option off the table” at the same time that he is telling the world that he wants to be “unpredictable” the preconditions for catastrophe are laid.

Nukes

If we don’t destroy these doomsday weapons…they will destroy us!

There are over a million attempts a day to hack into the US strategic command computers, from whence the orders to launch a nuclear missile would be given, and I am certain there are many attempts to penetrate the Russian system. It is reasonable to assume that the experience hackers are gaining from their attempts to penetrate these highly-sophisticated systems will help equip them to invade less complex systems such as that of North Korea. For a fanatical Muslim Jihadist equally pissed off at the “Great Satan” America, and the Godless Communist in Korea and China, provoking a nuclear exchange between them could be viewed as a carrying out the will of Allah. It is beyond hubris and into the realm of delusion to believe that no one will ever succeed in crashing these nuclear command systems.

Of course, given the cluelessness of Trump, an accidental nuclear exchange could occur without the help of Jihadist. The ignorance of the man who controls the Doomsday US nuclear arsenal is shocking. In a recent interview in which Trump was asked about the possibility of a thermo-nuclear war with Korea, he sounded dangerously confused – as if he had refused to read his copious briefing notebooks and slept throug the briefing sessions with the National Security Advisor. An alarm went off in my head as I listened to Trump recount how American Presidents from Clinton to Obama had been “played” by “the gentleman” from Pyongyang, and assured us that things would be different now that the wily Korean would be dealing with him!

The problem with his analysis is that Trump was actually talking about three different people: Kim ill Sung, Kim Jung Ill and Kim Jong Un. Verbose, intellectually lazy ignoramus that he is, Trump had no clue that the present leader of north Korea, Kim Jong UN – was a toddler when Clinton did his deal with Kim ill Sung. Alas, a day hardly passes that Donnie Dimwit does not do something that embarrasses the nation.

Yet that is not the worst of it: the combination of ignorance, arrogance and pugnacousness that are the pillars of his personality makes him dangerous to America and the world. Alas, when Trump’s mindless impulsive use of America’s vast military power is spurred on by an ignorant electorate who want to “make America great again,” applauded by a jingoistic press and encouraged by old warmongers in the Senate such as Lindsay Graham and John McCain – two reckless old farts with one foot in the grave who appear to want to take everybody else with them – we should be afraid…very afraid

For a first hand account of how nuclear war almost destroyed civilization

Click on Link and Watch Robert S. Macnamara’s film: “The Fog of War.”

Note: Robert S. McNamara, the subject of this film, was the Secretary of Defense during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the US and Russia almost destroyed the world in a nuclear war. His testimony about how close both side came to launching their nuclear missiles is the most chilling revelation you will ever hear. And his reflections on war and weapons of mass destruction, which traces the growth in the destructive power of those weapons offer vitals lessons that could save us from a war of extinction. PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO VIEW THIS FILM, AND DEMAND THAT YOUR CONGRESSMAN PUT FORTH A BILL THAT WILL END DONALD TRUMP’S BOYCOTT OF THE UN CONFERENCE TO BAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS!

It is the height of hypocrisy for Trump to emphasize the ban on nerve gas, and become so worked up by its alleged use by the Syrian government that he bombed the country, while at the same time refusing to even enter into a discussion about banning nuclear weapons – the destructive power of which makes nerve gas seem like a minor issue.